An article from the book ‘Are you a SuperLeader?’ by Manoj J Lekhi (Amrut Vivek).

Love is expressed through numerous ways in the world. A mother expresses her love for her child. Similarly a lover expresses his love for his beloved, a friend for his friend, and a disciple for his Guru and we may experience many more such forms of love. The Universe expresses its love towards everyone in the form of nature. Nature expresses its love through the shining sun, the showering rain and the beautiful fragrant fl owers. Everything and everyone expresses their love in one form or another. 

A human expression of emotion higher than love also exists. Yoga is a state where the self meets the universal self and ‘I’ merges with the universe. When this happens, love evolves into compassion. Compassion is a higher form of love. When

someone gets angry with us and we still feel love for them, then that is called compassion. Compassion happens when we can sense the other person’s pain, irritation, disturbance and feelings and yet love them in spite of their words,

behaviour, and actions. Hence compassion is the higher state of love.

Mother Teresa was known for her compassionate nature towards all. My master Guruji Shree Rishi Prabhakar had compassion towards everyone in the world. I remember so many teachers who have learnt from Guruji and later became spiritual masters in their own right. Yet whenever we would speak about them, he would refl ect a lot of love for them saying ‘It is okay, as long as the message is being passed across to the world, if not through me it is still being passed by someone. I am happy for them, I want them to be blessed’. He was always willing to welcome them back with open arms. This was the level of compassion that he had for everyone.

Compassion develops when one follows the SSY program. We teach one how to meditate and get into a state of total calmness. When one continues to meditate in this form for a number of years, it turns into a higher form of love which is compassion. Compassion develops when we can put ourselves in another person’s shoes and see life from his or her perspective. Whenever we are able to do this, we can feel their pain, anxiety, anguish and frustration too. Even when they express anger, we realize that they are not wrong if we consider the situation from their point of view. They are who they are, because of some past incident, memory or so on. They are not able to control their anger because they have gone through inner turmoil in their life, probably because of some past experiences or trauma, maybe during childhood or adulthood.

We humans are all conditioned machines and are running on an auto-pilot mode. We all form our patterns in seven year cycles. In the fi rst seven years maximum numbers of patterns are formed. Our parents may have shouted at us, been upset at us and conditioned us. And such repetitive conditioning forms a pattern which we then follow through our entire life. In the first seven years, emotional development takes place in which we form patterns mainly because of our parents. The next seven years is mental development stage (from conditions) forming patterns through the conditioning of Parents, Relatives and Teachers. From the age of 14-21 years we develop behaviour based on infl uences from Parents, Relatives, Teachers, Friends, Books, Movies, Songs, Events, Situations, Experiences and all the inputs that we get from the environment. This way we form patterns that we are not aware of and are not able to catch and so we keep bursting out in anger.

A person who meditates and introspects is always full of gratitude. When a person starts Yoga initially in whichever form, he starts calming down, eventually cooling his anger and other urges. When he starts meditating, the heart chakra starts opening and a noticeable difference in his behaviour is seen. When the heart chakra is open, in its higher form it develops into compassion. ‘It’s not his or her fault’ is deeply embedded into the mind of a person who meditates regularly, who does Yoga, therefore he is not upset with the person who is scolding because he knows that it is not the person’s fault. Empathy is a natural outgrowth of compassion. 

We can empathize with a person rather than sympathizing. Sympathy would mean pitying the person. It is a low vibration emotion. Empathizing would empower the other person. We can thus see that compassion is the natural outcome when a person goes inwards. A Super Leader grows in compassion moment-to-moment and thus is able to take huge masses along. Gandhiji was an epitome of leadership. He would empathize with anyone and everyone. Compassion was dripping out of his being every moment. This is the greatest gift that I have received from my master – to be able to see others’ perspective, to operate without passing judgements and to live in compassion every moment. 

I insist you to experience this bliss which is the birth-right of every single person in this world. A Super Leader begins with compassion and empathy.